When the wrong thing gets popular

The dark satanic content mills vs. Angine de Poitrine Never try to go viral. There’s a unique embarrassment that comes with trying to go virality. The kind reserved for TV ads that appropriate internet meme culture. An abyssal exercise in the pathetic stemming from the fact that virality, by its very nature, is a freak of circumstance, grabbing our attention with unfiltered abandon. An accidental one liner captured on TikTok that somehow cuts to the core of the popular mood. This is distinct from popularity. Pop music, for example, is designed to be popular in the traditional sense. Top down by nature, orchestrated, financially backed. Pop music attempts to be part of the scenery whilst simultaneously groping for attention. The procedural sequencing of a release schedule replete with PR campaigns, interviews, and media backed hype is mundane, part of the furniture. We regard it with all the curiosity of a plane passing overhead. Virality, by contrast, is a proverbial flying pig.…